Reading: Kindergarten

Learning Benefits

In kindergarten, children begin to grow as independent readers and become more familiar and comfortable with reading. Reading is intertwined into the daily life of your kindergartner. A kindergarten classroom is full of words and labeled objects. Students read and talk about books, and read the day’s schedules, class letters, songs and poems throughout the day.

In order to build reading skills, your kindergartner:

Learns all of the letters of the alphabet (upper case and lower case) and their sounds.

Begins to “read” books himself, mainly from memorization.

Recognizes several basic sight words such as I, my, you, is and are.

Reads and listens to stories and then talks about stories, their plots, characters and events.

Follows words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.

Recognizes and can produce rhyming words.

Adds or substitutes individual sounds in simple, one-syllable words to make new words. For example, replaces the “C” in “Cat” with an “R” to create the word “Rat.”

Reading Activities

Read and Repeat: Have your child “read” her favorite book to you, using her memory, associations and clues from the pictures.

Alphabet Books: Use drawings or pictures from magazines to create an alphabet book which has a letter and an object that begins with that letter on each page.

Fill in the Blank: When you read a favorite picture book to your child and you come across a short word that rhymes or is familiar to your child because he knows the book very well, stop and let him say the word. Point to the word as he says it and spell it out.

Act it Out: Act out parts of or the whole story of your child’s favorite and well-known books.